


Take Me Back To The Start

by foldingcranes



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Transistor (Video Game), Canon Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, M/M, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 05:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11593902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foldingcranes/pseuds/foldingcranes
Summary: Overwatch has fallen. Talon has taken over the city and if Blue doesn't stop them, they'll be soon taking over the whole world. And his pulse rifle isn't happy about that. At all.[The Transistor AU no one asked for, featuring Jack "Blue" Morrison and Gabriel The Pulse Rifle.]





	Take Me Back To The Start

**Author's Note:**

> A Transistor AU inspired by this [beautiful work of fanart](http://boardingtheark.tumblr.com/post/158963530699/when-you-speak-i-hear-silence-every-word-a) by [@boardingtheark](http://boardingtheark.tumblr.com/). I saw it a few months ago when I got into the Overwatch fandom and I couldn't resist, so I've been working on this fic since May. I'm sorry?
> 
> Many thanks to Kate for her always stellar beta reading work and to Ceci, for helping me figure this out and encouraging me so much <3.

There's a piece of rebar through Gabriel's stomach, a pool of blood forming underneath his body. It stains the soil and turns it black, darker than the color of Gabriel's Blackwatch uniform. Broken concrete surrounds them, entombing them. There's nothing more than fire, broken ruins and the smell of charred flesh, now.  
  
Gabriel's laying in what used to be a garden. It's a surreal experience to see him there, cold and stiff near a patch of ruined flowers. He’s so close to the spot where Jack hid when his duties as Strike Commander overwhelmed him, and Gabriel had to regretfully drag him back to the main building for some unpleasant task. It got worse as the years went on, the weight of command and the demands from the UN straining his shoulders until he didn't know what to do with himself. Until he woke up every night in a state of near panic.  
  
Gabriel was there every time. He was Jack’s anchor. Irreplaceable and so, so very loved.  
  
Jack comes back to himself. Blinks a couple of times. Everything has been blurry since he woke up, there's a ringing in his ears and multiple aches all over his body. There are parts of his face he can't feel.  
  
His throat is hoarse from screaming and from pleading over Gabriel's body until numbness took over. Eventually, he couldn't do more than hold the hand of the man he loved and stare at what little he could see of his face through his useless eyes.  
  
After some time, darkness takes over.  


* * *

  
  
“You need to wake up, Blue.”

Jack covers his ears with a pillow, burrowing further into the bed covers, as if they could help him disappear. It’s too early for this shit.  
  
“I don’t,” he croaks. There’s a shuffling noise and he can feel the weight of someone settling beside him on the bed. A hand strokes the hair in his nape. Gabriel’s.  
  
“You need to wake up.” Gabriel sounds sad and Jack frowns, but when he opens his eyes he can see only darkness.  
  
“I don’t want to.” The bed doesn’t feel so soft anymore. And he’s too warm, way warmer than normal.  
  
“I know,” Gabriel says, sounding very far away from Jack. “That’s what hurts the most, Jackie. I wish things weren’t like this.”  
  
“Like what?” Jack asks, heart beating too fast.  
  
“Gone… just. Gone.”  
  
When Jack opens his eyes again, there’s no one there.  
  
-  
  
Heat. That's what Jack remembers the most about waking up a second time. Flames are crackling around him and there's a distant (familiar) voice calling for him, telling him to run as fast as he can, to get away from the fire. He stands up, stumbling. He tries to open his eyes, but his face is caked with something warm and sticky and everything looks red, like the fire trying to engulf him--  
  
“Blue.” A voice. Gabriel's voice.  
  
“Gabe?” His bottom lip quivers. God, he sounds pathetic. Please, he almost sobs, please don't let this be a hallucination.  
  
“Blue, hey,” Gabriel's voice has a soothing quality that Jack hasn't heard in weeks. “Jackie, I'm here. To your right, on the floor.”  
  
Jack reaches out and fumbles, searching. His hand finds something hard and familiar.  
  
A pulse rifle.  
  
“Pick me up, Jackie.”  
  
Jack’s lip quivers and his chest hurts, too tight to contain his frantic heart, and he's choking on what little air he's getting through the smoke--  
  
“Breathe, Blue. C'mon, you know how to do this,” Gabriel soothes him, “Start counting 3, 2, 1-- yeah, that's it, sweetheart. Whatever you do, don’t let go.”  
  
Jack does as he’s told, and ends up taking a big breath of air before going on. He cradles the rifle to his chest and walks away, limping, until the flames turn into little lights behind his back.  
  
“You're alive,” he says, his voice filled with wonder. It's like he needs to say it out loud to fully believe it, so he can cling to what little he has left of Gabriel to keep his sanity, to keep his feet on the ground and his will to survive this fucking disaster. “I saw your body, I tried-- you bled so much.”  
  
“Yeah,” Gabriel sighs. Jack can hear a certain sense of weariness in his voice. “Well, that didn't take. But my body is gone, Jack. My body is gone for good.”  
  
“How…?” Jack’s dizzy, and his mind comes to a halt. He has a moment to wonder if he’s making the whole thing up due to a combination of shock and trauma. But he keeps walking, until the smudged form of trees take place before him. “What can you feel? What do you see?”

He blinks a couple of times, still confused. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can still be here. I don’t get what the fuck is going on.”  
  
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Gabriel answers. “But I can’t exactly see what’s going on around me. I just know it, Jackie, you’ve got to trust me on this.”  
  
“I do. Trust you, I mean,” Jack mutters, and Gabriel’s silence at that statement settles heavily in his gut. It’s still an open wound between them, the weeks of endless arguments and discussions that lead up to this. Gabriel’s accusations about Jack not trusting him, and him not knowing how to handle the intel Gabriel provided for him.  
  
Now it all makes sense and he is so, so tired.  
  
(You fool. You useless, incompetent fool.)  
  
He falls against the trunk of a tree once he reaches the middle of the forest and closes his eyes, hugging the pulse rifle to his chest with both arms. It feels like he walked for ages, dragging his sore legs until they couldn’t stand the weight of his own body anymore. “You’re a fucking pulse rifle.”

“This isn't happening.” He laughs hysterically. Laughs until his throat is too raw again, until he’s coughing.  
  
“What do we do now, Gabe?” Jack rasps, eyes still closed since he can barely see anyway, adrenaline slowly fading from his body.  
  
“You know what to do, Blue,” Gabe says, his voice breaking at the end. Jack feels his eyes sting. “We need to look for answers. I told you things were rotten, Blue, and you didn’t deal with it on time. We can’t get Overwatch to what it was but we can end this mess once and for all.”  
  
Jack rests his head against the tree. Lets everything sink. The facts are that Gabriel warned him about an oncoming threat, Jack found his hands tied behind his back and now all they got is hubris and a lot of questions.  
  
“I think I have an idea of what’s happened to me,” Gabriel speaks again. “I was investigating this shit on my last mission. The one after McCree left.” There’s a pause, and Jack makes a humming noise to let Gabriel know he’s listening.  
  
“They—These guys, Talon. They were trying to create an intelligent weapon using nanomachines. It involved souls.” There’s a stutter in Gabriel’s voice, like every time he had to dump some unwanted truth on Jack’s face. It makes him sounds more human. “I think that’s what they tried to activate when they attacked the base. It failed. You reached for it when the suicide bomber in hall activated the detonator and I remember another rogue agent being there.”  
  
Jack’s not sure if he’d be able to connect the dots on his own and, while Gabriel’s the quick one between the two of them and seems to possess part of the information, it’s clear that it’s not enough. He tries to stand up and hisses as he feels a jolt of pain, courtesy of one of the burns in his right side.  
  
“We’re going to need supplies,” Jack pants. He touches his side, trying to examine his wounds, and smells the metallic tang of blood on his fingers. “Some biotic fields.”  
  
“Jack, you sound like a train ran you over,” Gabriel chides him. “What you need to do is see a doctor. You need to look for Angela. Right now.”  
  
“No,” Jack barks. “No, there’s no way I’m doing that. I’m not getting anyone else involved.”  
  
“Are you telling me that you seriously plan to do this on your own, you stubborn bastard?” Gabriel is, clearly, not impressed with his modus operandi. Jack’s not surprised at all.  
  
“I’m not alone,” Jack snorts, giving his rifle (Gabe?) a pat. “I got you.”  
  
“Yeah,” Gabriel laughs bitterly. “Because I’m so useful like this. I could run a marathon and knits us sweaters and all that jazz.”  
  
“Well,” Jack sighs, wishing he could soothe Gabriel. He’s never been very good at providing comfort. “You can shoot. And you’re not going to stay like that forever. We’ll fix you.”  
  
“My body is gone, Blue,” Gabriel says, slowly. There’s pity in his voice and Jack doesn’t know who is he aiming it at. A cold feeling runs down his back and he feels like he’s going to have trouble breathing again, abused lungs giving out for good this time. He’s not even sure about this whole conversation happening outside of his mind.

Is this what it feels to go completely mad? Either way, it’s the only way he can keep Gabe with him. There’s no other choice for him but go forward, even if he’s behaving like a psychiatric case and clinging to a ghost.  
  
“You’re going to guide me,” Jack stands on shaky legs, pulse rifle still in his arms. “My eyes got damaged in the explosion. We could probably raid the Overwatch base on the outskirts of the city.”  
  
“You can barely stand, jackass,” Gabriel protests. “You won’t be able to walk.”  
  
Jack shrugs. He’s going to finish this, running on sheer stubbornness if it’s necessary.  


* * *

  
  
The silence at the base it's chilling, and its deserted status doesn't help diminish the sense of dread that has located in Jack's gut.  
  
Gathering intel has been difficult, Overwatch agents being chased around the world like preys, and Talon spreading around like a disease. During the last couple of hours, Jack's been following a trail of bodies and the smoke signals of everything he and Gabe ever built.  
  
“Don't rush it, Blue.” Gabe's tinny voice snaps him out of his reverie, and he instantly looks at his pulse rifle. “As far as we know, this place could be riddled with Talon's goons.”  
  
Jack grumbles and takes a closer look at his surroundings. Every Overwatch base has the same starting layout, so it's not difficult to find the control room.  
  
“Remember that device I made you steal from the previous base? Stick it to the main console." Jack does as he's told without any reason to question Gabriel's order. He's the expert here, and Jack is nothing more than an attack dog now, like it always should have been.  
  
His head is throbbing, and Jack can feel the warning signs of a migraine coming, the strain of the tactical visor he has stolen allowing to see, but taking its toll on him. When the screen in the main console lights up, displaying Talon's logo for a moment, he has to close his eyes for a few seconds, a little blindsided.  
  
When he can look at the screen again, the Talon logo is gone, allowing the information to be displayed in a series of numbers and lines of code. Jack snorts. He wonders how is that they didn't notice this plague before, when it had located itself so deeply in Overwatch, so closely intertwined within its roots.  
  
He keeps following Gabriel's instructions until he reaches the database. Then, with painful effort, he starts reading.  
  
And reading.  
  
“They've taken the whole city, Jack.” They stare at the red dots located in the map, glowing in the middle of the darkness. “They're going to end up taking the whole country in a couple of hours at this rate. Shit, I can't believe they're controlling Omnics.”  
  
“We need to find the head and cut it out, but...” Jack goes quiet, searching through hundreds and hundreds of files. “I need to go back for you.”  
  
“Jack,” Gabriel interrupts, irritated. “You saw my body. There's no going back for me, you need to forget about me and focus on our mission.”  
  
“Fine,” Jack snaps at him, bristling anger barely contained. He unplugs the device once he stores everything he needs, and stays silent all the way out of the base, tuning out Gabriel's endless chattering.  
  
“You can give me the silent treatment forever, Blue.”  
  
Jack grunts.  
  
“See, this is how we end up having these shitty problems. I tell you to stop being a fucking child and you just try harder to do that. Stop the tantrum, Morrison.”  
  
“You're the one not taking this seriously,” Jack grunts.  
  
“I am! I am taking this seriously! You're the one who keeps getting fucking sidetracked, Jackie. You're the Strike Commander, pull yourself together and do your goddamn job.”  
  
“I'm not,” Jack mutters.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I'm not Strike Commander anymore.” Jack pauses. Breathes. He puts a hand over his heart, trying to still it. “Overwatch is gone, and now I'm back to the start. I'm just a soldier.”  
  
Gabriel curses. Now's not the time for this, they're running out of time and trying to stop a terrorist organization in control of an army of murdering robots, and Jack's the only one out of the two of them who can stop this madness.  
  
From the annoyed tone of his voice, Jack knows Gabriel hates being a fucking rifle. He probably needs a five hundred years nap.  
  
“I know you're upset,” Gabriel begins, making himself sound as soft as he can. “And under any other circumstance I wouldn't ask this of you, but… you need to prioritize the mission. Stop worrying about me and end this war, Blue.”  
  
Jack slams a fist over the console in a fit of anger. “I won’t let you go! Stop fucking asking me to do that.”  
  
“You little—” Gabriel stops whatever he was about to say and goes quiet for a moment and Jack stills. There’s something like a siren and footsteps far away. “Shit.”  
  
Jack unplugs the device with the stolen information and picks the rifle up, getting out of the room. He heads to the hallway, looking for the emergency exit. Realizes they’re too far away from it, and when he turns for the hallway with the elevators, a shot grazes his ear. He takes cover behind a wall and counts at least ten Talon agents coming their way.  
  
“Fuck.” Jack takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders. Checks his ammo.  
  
“If you go there, guns blazing and all that shit, I’m going to be so fucking mad at you.” Gabriel grumbles, and Jack can’t help laughing at how pissed off he sounds even as a pulse-rifle-haunting ghost.  
  
“I’m sorry, love. You should’ve known better.” He leaves his hiding spot and stops shooting towards the agents, fully knowing he needs to make his way past them to get out of the base. The weight of the rifle feels familiar, drawing him to what he believes it’s the core of his soul: a soldier. Nothing less, nothing more.  
  
In only a moment, he takes down two agents with a couple of shots and gets his first bullet wound, right in the shoulder. He stumbles, but avoids falling by using the wall for support, and dodges and incoming kick from another agent, retaliating with a punch in the face and shooting him when he’s on the floor.  
  
It’s going to be a fun night.  


* * *

  
  
Jack blew up the base as soon as they got out.  
  
“Easy, Blue,” Gabe's soothing voice comes out of his pulse rifle, making it glow red. Jack cradles him against his chest, adrenaline still pumping through his blood, resting on what's left of a concrete wall. If Gabe still had a face, he'd be arching his eyebrows at how Jack doesn't seem to care about the fact that he's bleeding from a bullet hole in his side.  
  
“You're old as fuck,” Gabriel chides him, and Jack lets out a soundless chuckle. “Too old to be running around with bullet wounds, come on. Time for old men like you to take cover.”  
  
“You’re old too,” Jack rasps, not wanting to let Gabriel’s sass run rampant. His hand goes to his pocket, checking for the device with the information and he sighs with relief when he feels it there. “Older than me. Old as balls.”  
  
“Nice, Jackie. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.” Gabriel laughs. He has the most pleasant laugh that Jack’s ever heard; it’s contagious and soft and he can picture the way Gabriel’s eyes crinkle with it, and see the dimples at the corners of his mouth.  
  
A lump settles in his throat when he thinks of not ever seeing that again.  
  
“Are you okay?” Gabriel asks. Jack pictures him frowning.  
  
“Yeah,” He coughs. “Yeah, just—gonna set a biotic field. I’ll be okay.” As soon as he does it, he can feel the warmth that comes with the golden light of the biotic field, and his eyes feel heavy with tiredness, his pain dulled away for the moment.  
  
The streetlights color every corner of the ruined city in a sickly, fluorescent yellow, but it's not like Jack would worry about colors with his visor making him see everything in a single shade of red, blurring every detail and reducing things to vague shapes.  
  
“We need to find the next base,” He mumbles. He hears Gabriel make a humming noise, and raises a hand towards the pulse rifle, stroking it slowly. “Find shelter first…”  
  
“You’ll need a Blackwatch safehouse for that,” Gabriel suggests. Jack nods, and wonders if it would be okay to sleep right there out in the open, near a fire he just caused.  
  
“Don’t even think about sleeping here, Morrison.”  
  
He guesses not.  


* * *

  
  
By the time they reach the safehouse, Jack’s too numb to worry about the pain or his wounds. He just discards his torn clothes in the main hallway and looks for the bathroom, Gabriel cradled in his arms again. When he gets there, he fills the tub with warm water and leaves the rifles settled against the nearest wall, then slowly gets himself into the bathtub, feeling the heat that radiates from the water over the multiple wounds in his body. He hugs his knees and rests his forehead on top of them, thinking.  
  
“You should be here with me.” He mumbles at Gabriel. A few tears escape his eyes and he splashes some water over his face so he can dissimulate.

  
“I know,” Gabriel’s sad voice comes from the rifle. Every time he talks, the whole weapon glows in a color Jack can’t properly distinguish. “I could use a bath, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Is this thing waterproof?”  
  
“Only one way to find out.” Jack reaches for the rifle and picks it up, settling it on his lap. Water doesn’t seem to do any real damage and he ends up hugging it. “Now you can get all nice and clean with me.”  
  
“All nice and wet,” Gabriel says in a singy songy voice, amused. Jack smiles a little and rests his cheek against the rifle, his eyes closed. He lets the warmth relax him.  
  
He thinks of sinking his head into the water and never raising it again. Of drowning them both. It would be peaceful.  
  
“Blue,” Gabriel calls him gently. “Whatever you do, don’t let go. Don’t ever let go.”  
  
Jack presses his lips against the gun.  
  
“I won’t.”

After he’s done, when he’s clean and dry, he goes to the only bedroom in the safehouse and lies on a dusty bed with a lumpy mattress. He keeps Gabriel by his side, puts an arm over him-- it, like he’s holding him.

Tomorrow, he’ll wake up and Gabriel will probably be gone for real. All that has happened will be just a distant dream. A product of his grief.

Jack swallows back his sadness and closes his eyes.

He sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](http://countingcranes.tumblr.com/post/163355163667/take-me-back-to-the-start-12).
> 
> Final part will be up soon!


End file.
